This is just my not very subtle way of saying.....WOOOOOHOOOO!!!!!!!!!I was selected to be on the Serendipity Scrapbooks Design Team! This place is a blast, packed to the rim with talent and offers some amazing monthly kits. You can see the DT announcement HERE. I had to make a couple of layouts specifically for the application. I figured I would share them here...

Definitely come stop by to chat, upload some projects to the gallery, check out the kits and see all the CHA preorders available in the store.

The new kit is shipping early next week and I CANNOT wait to get started. I will share more as soon as I can :)

Jan 25, 2010

I had one busy scrapping weekend. No, I didnt make it to CHA :( but I did participate in Serendipity's online Project Runway Crop. There were challenges all weekend, so I kind of took the weekend "off" from chores and serving the kids and sneaked away to scrap whenever I could. The crop was a blast and I got TONS done. Seriously, I finished about 11 layouts and one mini project. And I did not stay up all night AND I took a break to scrap with a friend at our local scrapbook store's sampler class. I'll just share a few of my favs here:

Also, today the new ScrapTiffany challenge is posted. This may be a tough one for many people because the challenge is to scrap Grief. You could make a layout or a sympathy card. I chose to scrap a picture of my Grandma, because in the 5 years that I have been scrapping I have not scrapped any photos of her yet. This was a perfect time to start because I am sad that she is not here to know Scott and the kids. The journaling is hidden in the Maya Road envelope.

Go over to ScrapTiffany and check out the other amazing layouts, lots of genuine emotion expressed. And if you take the challenge, be sure to email it to Tiffany by friday.

Jan 18, 2010

The very fun (and only slightly embarrassing) challenge today at ScrapTiffany was to do an 80's layout. I was a child of the 80's so florescent clothes, dangle rubber bracelets, keds with puffy socks, frizzy perms etc, that was all the main stay when I was growing up. I looked through a couple of my old photo albums and I even had a camera back in 1985. So many of the pictures were not of me, but I did find this one crazy one where I was on vacation with my family at Busch Gardens in Florida. It's not the greatest picture and I had a lot of trouble editing it to make it any clearer, but my dorkiness and 80's "style" show through. LOL. Without further ado, here I am in 1985...

Jan 12, 2010

Turns out you CAN complete a scrapbook layout in 30 minutes. American Crafts challenge this week is to do just that. I don't have a lot of time on my hands so in general I move fast, but on average I complete a layout in a few hours (read during one nap time). So I knew I needed to keep this one simple. I chose one 5x7 photo of Little Miss and thought of a list journaling that would represent her likes at this point in time. I hand wrote that list rather than deal with using the computer and kept everything else very simple. No time to sew so I drew the faux white stitches. The most involved part was putting mini mark rubons onto the buttons. And that took all of a few minutes. Fun.

This layout is up on the Posh blog for yesterday's post. This one took a bit longer than 30 minutes because I did a lot of stamping and cutting. Notice I used pictures from the same "photo shoot"? I do that a lot :)

And finally, today on the Posh blog, there is a new card sketch challenge. Here is the sketch:

And here is my take:

I was able to break out my new Cuttlebug for this one to emboss the heart pattern and I have to say I love how easy it is to add such a neat impact to a card. Head on over to the Posh Blog and upload your take on the sketch before January 25th for your chance to win the new Pink Paislee Cupid Impressions Clear Stamp Set!

Jan 11, 2010

Here we are at another monday. I think I am shocked because this weekend was a blur of runny and stuffy noses and little else. Oh well, hopefully it is moving OUT this week and we will back to fun next weekend.

The fun for today at ScrapTiffany is a new challenge to do a 5 photo layout. Here is mine:

I used some Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist for the photo block matte and the background of the title.

The papers, house stamp and stickers are Bella Blvd.

Head over to ScrapTiffany to check out the other designers work. Gorgeous stuff going on.

Jan 4, 2010

Is it really already January 4th? Yikes, if the rest of the month goes this fast it will be February before we know it! I think February is my favorite time of year in Arizona. The days start getting longer and the days are warm and sunny while the nights are still cool.

Anyway, it is Monday and you know what that means....the first official ScrapTiffany challenge with the new Design Team has been posted. The challenge was to scrap about, "I couldnt live without..." I chose to do a 2009 year in review of some of the things I couldnt live without (other than family and friends of course!!).

Go on over to ScrapTiffany and check out all the new designers and their takes on this fun challenge. And if you take the challenge be sure to email it to Tiffany before Friday. And keep coming back each Monday--this is going to be a term of fun challenges, there is a new forum to chat on, a blog hop and other fun surprises. We would love to see you there.

Jan 2, 2010

There was a week or so there where I did no scrapbooking or cardmaking. I know, I was shocked too :) The holiday preparations just kept me running in circles, so once I got back into my schedule and creative zone I couldn't wait to get back to work. Fortunately, this month is my month to design at Color Me Daisy so I had an amazing kit to work with...
The January kit for Color Me Daisy is now available. It's called Homemade Treats and features some of Basic Grey's Nook and Pantry as well as We R Memory Keepers Twirl. As always there is a delicious assortment of colorful and wonderfully coordinated buttons, alphas and fabric. The bright and happy colors in this kit will quickly get you out of any winter doldrums. Here are a few layouts I made with Homemade Treats main kit and Alpha add ons:

My challenge at the CMD forum this month is to find a new use for buttons. In this layout I took a handful of colorful buttons, put them in a ziploc bag and hammered them to bits. I then used those colorful bits as sprinkles on cupcakes:

If you take the challenge, be sure to load your layout up to the CMD gallery and post it in this THREAD.

I also made several general "Hi" cards from Homemade Treats:

I know I probably say this for every month that I get to design at CMD, but this kit is awesome and so easy to work with.

In other news, be sure to check out the Posh blog today, I have these holiday thank you cards posted. I used October Afternoon's Very Merry for these cards. Anyone else giddy with excitement to see what new lines they come out with in a few weeks?

Hope your all enjoying this nice long weekend. At first I wasn't sure what we were going to do during all this time off, but the time has really flown by quickly! Be sure to come back on Monday for the first ScrapTiffany challenge of 2010.

Jan 1, 2010

I really wanted to get this post out BEFORE 2010, but it didnt happen. Better late than never right? I was cleaning up my files of layouts and putting all the 2009 layout photos into one neat file. And as I flipped through, I picked out my top 10 favorites. It's always hard for me to pick favorites. I usually like the one I did most recently the best lol! But I gave it a go...

This one tells a story I really want to remember about Little Man not being able to pronounce the letter V and how I almost didn't want to teach him ;)

This one is a fav because it has pics of Scott and I from when we lived in San Francisco. I didnt have a great camera back then and so I havent scrapped a lot of those pictures, and this was fun to do.

I loved all the ledger stitching I saw this year. Here's my take on it and this was a big day for Little Miss--her first day of Pre K.

Love a simple design and that look.... Need I say more??

I love everything about this one...an old pic of Scott and I (before we had kids), the Road Map collection from October Afternoon was one of my favorites from this year, the fact that I had circle punch exactly the same size as the circles on the patterned paper. It was just fun to really enjoy a layout about us.

This one made it onto the Cosmo Cricket blog:

This one made it onto the Jillibean Soup blog:

This one made it onto the Sassafras blog:

I love these pictures of the boys with the woodgrain background:

and this one was from my Guest Designer month at Coordinates Collections

Wow, was that really ten already?? How about a few bonus ones?

This was one of my first layouts from 2009. I just LOVE these pictures. They crack me up.

This one was an American Crafts challenge winner--I won the whole Craft Fair line!

This one won me a Guest Design spot at Create My Keepsake. Miss that place :(

And this card won me an honorable mention on the Hero Arts blog:

Alright, I could keep doing this all night long. It is so fun to look back! What I love about this is I can SEE my progression in just a year. Learning more about photography, design, different techniques, sewing etc. Then add the fun of seeing the kids growing up and remembering the stories from the past year. All in all, I am so grateful to have found this craft, have amazing beautiful kids for subjects and a generally supportive (if a bit grumbling at times) husband who tries to understand my need for creative time and space.

Thanks for stopping by and taking this trip down memory lane with me. I have some exciting new things to share within the next few months so 2010 will be starting with a bang around here!